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November 28, 2011

Confessions

Sunday morning, we all slept in. All of us that is, except Miles, who has decided that he doesn't need sleep to function. When he woke up at the crack of dawn Kamron sat him in the chair with the iPad and there he sat still playing Angry Birds and Geared nearly an hour and a half later when the rest of us decided we were ready to get up and start the day.

I casually mentioned to Kamron that if we were "good" parents that Miles' "30 minutes of screen time" had been blown for the day. Kamron had no idea what I was talking about. I said, "Well, some people say that kids should have no more than 30 minutes or an hour of screen time a day." We looked at each other for a minute and contemplated what that would look like if that that was a rule in our home and then we nearly died. It wasn't even worth thinking about. He said, "Do real people really do that?" and I went on to tell him about blogs that I read of mom's who do implement that rule. God bless 'em. Truly. I nominate them for sainthood because that would be torturous to ME! I'm just not up for it. I delude myself by saying that there are so many educational shows on TV and so many great apps for kids that it's okay. But really, I don't know why I even bother to justify it- because I am okay with this one (HA!) thing that I do wrong in parenting.

Pshew... that feels good to say. Hello, my name is Megan and I let my kids watch more than 30 minutes of TV a day and I don't care! I don't think they'll grow up to be dumb or be serial killers (I always want to type cereal killer- like they are lucky charms murderers or something) or be juvenile delinquents. In the spirit of confessing and how good it is for the soul- here are a few other winning moves of mine that I should include on my nomination form for mother of the year.

* Sometimes when I walk in the bathroom and one of the boys has peed all over the seat, instead of wiping it up, I just go use the other bathroom.

* I send my son to preschool at least 50% of the time with no underwear on because the sensory fight is not worth it to me. Also- I think there is something freeing about going commando and if that's how he wants to express his five year old self, then I say, let it all hang out (inside his pants of course!)

* Miles never takes naps. I used to let it go and not even try to fight him on it. But lately I make him stay in his room for1 hour every afternoon. I tried to tell myself that it's because he needs some down time but the truth is that I need the down time.

* I make my kids ride the bus because the last thing I want to do with my life is sit in the car rider line at three different schools every single day.

* I don't pack school lunches. Every school year I start out doing it and loose my lunch making mojo around the end of September. My child eats school lunch where they consider pizza a vegetable. I know. I'm crap.

* When I see my children doing something really bizarre or it they are stuck in a weird place (like between the bed and the wall) my first instinct is to take a picture of them and then help them. I may need therapy.

* Every inch of my house (furniture, walls, appliances) is covered in crayon or ink pen and I can't even get mad about it because usually when these incidents occur it is because I am wasting time on the Internet instead of putting on my crayon police hat.

* My children take a bath in a tub with a permanent ring in it. I stand firm that dirt adds character. My husband is the only one who take a shower in the stall shower in our bathroom. That shower may be nonexistent low on my list of priorities when cleaning. Again- dirt builds character and I am a freaking master at helping people build character.

* I never put away the clean laundry. I *try* really hard to get better at it, but it just doesn't happen and Mount Clothesmore sits on top of my dryer. So sometimes my kids wear socks that maybe aren't clean to school because digging out clean ones would topple the whole pile. I must get this under control before they get stinky teenager feet. I'm giving myself 5 years to work this one out.

* I answer questions with "because I said so" and sometime I lose my chit when that isn't a good enough answer.

* Until now, I've held firm to the fact that I have never in my whole life, ahem, broken wind. You heard it here first, folks. Sometimes I do aaaaaaand I BLAME IT ON THE KIDS!

I think that I've now done a substantial job of providing evidence on why I should totally be...

By the way, if you do a google image search for "mother of they year" only women who look like they are starring in an adult diaper commercial appear. Really- they ALL look like this...

If looking all Florence Henderson (who is very pretty, but still!) is what it takes to win, then withdraw my nomination STAT! Yes, I pee in my pants when I laugh. Or sneeze. Or bend over. Or jump. But dammit, I refuse to play the role of the Depends model if that is what it takes to win this coveted award. I'll just continue to sit here in my sweats for the third day in a row with my uncombed hair and morning breath and my relative anonymity and be totally pumped that my children appear to be semi well adjusted despite all my attempts to screw them up! Thank God for my normalish husband who balances out my crazy for them! Amen.

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